The first day North was out of the hospital, Beth texted me from their physical therapy appointment: “Green light for the beach.” Apparently, the therapist thought it would be fine to go.

So we went.

Saturday

We got a late start out of the house at 2 p.m., two hours later than we intended, and then there was a lot of traffic before the Bay Bridge, so it was almost four-thirty when we stopped at our traditional lunch spot, the Taco Bell and Dairy Queen right past the bridge (and yes, we did wait that long to eat lunch, snacking on garlic rye crisps and dried apricots in the car).

We stopped at our favorite farm stand and got a lot of produce, and arrived in Rehoboth around 7:30. We were all charmed by the house, which was nicer than it looked in its online pictures. It was wood-paneled with a soaring ceiling over the dining room and a sort of indoor veranda over the living room. The kitchen was a cheerful aqua color and spacious. There were two screened porches, a big one, and a little one with a desk I used as a writing table to write a lot of this post. It was also more house than we needed—five bedrooms. It’s harder to find little two or three bedroom cottages than it was in the nineties when we started vacationing in Rehoboth. Sadly, a lot of them have been torn down and replaced with larger houses.  But the space allowed us to spread out. Noah and I used one of the extra upstairs bedrooms as a reading room, and all week I kept imagining how we’d assign the rooms if we had our mothers and my sister and her family with us. We missed them a lot.

The only two drawbacks of the house were that 1) it wasn’t particularly accessible (we’d rented it back when North was on crutches, but not in a wheelchair) so we had to lift that chair up and down the front and back steps over and over, and 2) when we got there the thermostat was in a lockbox and set to 73 degrees and for the first couple days we were freezing, until we got the realty to open the box and let us set it.

The main reason we’d chosen this house was that it was a block from the beach, and we imagined North would be able to get to the beach on their own and would spend hours every day swimming. Clearly, that plan would have to be adjusted.

After unpacking the food, Beth, North, and I slipped down to the boardwalk. We were near the south end of it (we usually stay further north). There was an accessible path made of woven plastic that extended a little ways down the beach, close enough to see the water, so we wheeled North down it. We returned to the boardwalk, found the nearest beach wheelchair shed (five blocks away and closed for the day) so we’d know where it was, and then we peeked into Funland to see what their safety procedures looked like, but most of the entrances were blocked off and we couldn’t really see. Beth did manage to talk to an employee and ascertained that the Haunted Mansion was accessible. I don’t think North would want to go if they couldn’t do that.

We opted to turn around there because the crowds were getting thicker and not as many people were wearing masks as I would have liked (maybe half). Besides, it was getting late. We had a cold supper of cheese and crackers and fruit, as late as Europeans, Beth said. (It was past nine.) Then North did their physical therapy exercises and I cleaned up the kitchen and we turned in late (for us—it might have been eleven).

Sunday

Beth went out in the morning to get some breakfast groceries and we all ate and Beth and North went for another stroll on the boardwalk while I was still eating. When they returned they reported the crowds were sparser and a higher percentage of people were wearing masks in the daytime. I hit the beach around ten. It was a warm, muggy, foggy day. I could see the lifeguards from the water so I assumed they could see me, but the next lifeguard stand to the north was shrouded in fog and I couldn’t see the one to the south (which was further away) at all. The houses up on shore were partially obscured. It was kind of an eerie swim, but good to be in the water.

I swam about forty minutes, then took a short walk and returned to the house so Beth and I could menu plan and make a grocery list.  Once that was done, she left to go shopping, and I had lunch, read with Noah in our reading room, and then put the groceries away when she came home, and made lunch for North.

Around three, the kids and I left for the beach. The sky was darkening as we walked to the beach wheelchair shed and many more people were leaving the beach than arriving. This seemed like a bad sign, but I called for the beach patrol to unlock a chair for us. Someone arrived pretty quickly and soon we were rolling North down to the water. Their goal was to sit on the wet sand and feel the water on their feet and legs. It’s such a nice service that these chairs are available for anyone who needs them for free, but just as the big, puffy wheels hit the wet sand, the lifeguards heard thunder and blew their whistles and everyone had to get out of the water. So North’s vision was not realized that day. I was hoping to salvage the outing by asking if they wanted to stroll down the beach in the chair, or maybe just stay where we were and watch the waves, when a lifeguard came over and explained we had to leave the beach, not just the water.

We returned the beach wheelchair, got North back into the regular wheelchair, and pushed them up to the boardwalk. It was nice to have Noah’s help whenever he came to the beach. (And I would like to have the upper body strength of a nineteen-year-old boy who doesn’t even work out.) I eyed the boardwalk, wondering if a consolation prize of a trip to Candy Kitchen was feasible, but everyone who had left the beach seemed to be on the boardwalk now, plus the people who’d already been there, so we turned back. The storm never materialized.

Back at the house, Noah and I watched The Magicians while Beth and North watched The Fosters and then I blogged on the writing porch, while Beth made a dinner of veggie burgers and hot dogs, corn on the cob, potato salad, and watermelon.

After dinner, we ventured out to see if the boardwalk was less crowded on a Sunday night than a Saturday night. The answer was not really, but by ducking down side streets and looping back, we avoided the biggest crowds, and we got ice cream on Rehoboth Ave.  We also got a better look into Funland. What I saw in terms of distancing and masks was encouraging. We returned to a less populated part of the boardwalk to eat our ice cream and I stayed a bit after everyone else had gone home to watch the sky over the ocean get pinker and then grow dark.

Monday

I was on the beach by 9:45, leaving North and Beth at the dining room table, attending their online summer school course and working, respectively. It was a hot, sunny day so I went straight to the water where I swam for almost an hour. I saw pelicans and dolphins and only left the beach, reluctantly, at 11:15 because I didn’t want to get too much sun.

At the house I made lunch for myself and North, who had just finished class, then I read with Noah, and wrote some get-out-the-vote postcards for a special election in Tennessee. Beth drove me to the post office to mail them so I could get North to the beach sooner.

This time the day was sunny, with no hint of lightning or thunder so we got the beach wheelchair down to the water and I eased North out of it so they could sit on the sand, with the water running over their legs and sometimes covering them as high as their chest. I noticed when the water moved their thighs they were able to move them back into position without using their hands. They said it was partly being able to move better in the water, and partly the water itself, changing direction and pushing their legs back.

I texted Noah to come because it was almost time to return the beach wheelchair. Getting North down to the water was doable (but difficult) with one person, but getting back was definitely a two-person job.

We got Grandpa Mac (build-your-own-pasta-bowls) delivered for dinner and watched Babette’s Feast, after a half-hour negotiation about what to watch. I hadn’t seen it in decades, but it holds up and the kids liked it, too, especially North.

Tuesday

I took North to the beach in the morning. North thought they’d try sitting in the chair, pushed a little bit into the water because the man who checked out the chair said you can do that and North thought they’d get less sand in their suit that way. But even with the brake set, the chair crept forward when the sand under its wheels eroded in the waves and I was struggling to control it when three beachgoers ran to help. After that, I parked it on the dry sand and North scooched down to the water again. While we were in the water, we saw dolphins and pelicans but the most exciting thing I saw was North kneeling, sometimes holding my hands, but sometimes unsupported when the water got deep enough around them. Beth got to see it, too, because she’d come to help get North off the beach. (Unfortunately, they felt weaker the next day and attributed it to overexertion and were never able to do it again.)

Noah and Beth usually do a puzzle on vacations and this year they had a challenging one to tackle. It was a Frank Lloyd Wright design meant to evoke saguaro cacti and cactus flowers. North got it for Noah for Christmas. Beth and Noah started it Tuesday after lunch.

While they were getting started, I ventured to Candy Kitchen and made a big purchase because we’d decided to limit ourselves to one trip this year instead of a few. I got fudge, sea salt caramels, gummy pizza slices, truffles, and a few other things. The boardwalk wasn’t crowded at all and when I arrived I was the only one in the store. Beth and I decided, based on patterns we’d observed, that from then on we’d only go the boardwalk on weekdays, during the daytime.  Other than Candy Kitchen and the grocery store, we also kept out of the indoor stores we usually visit—the tea and spice shop, our favorite coffeeshop, t-shirt shops, the bookstore, the crocs outlet on the highway. We also skipped the water park, not that North could have gone this year anyway.

After I got back with the candy, Noah and I took a late afternoon trip to the beach. He brought his drone and got some great footage. While he was filming, I had a nice swim. It was sunny and the surface of the water was silvery, with all the little ripples sharply defined. It was clearer than usual, too, and I could see a little fish about the size of my finger swimming near the surface. I also saw a couple of jellyfish but I didn’t see the one that stung the inside of my wrist. It left a red mark, but it faded quickly and hurt less than a bee sting. (I was in a good position to judge because the prior week while waiting for a bus to go to the hospital, I was stung by a bee and the memory was fresh.)

Beth made her traditional beach week meal that night—gazpacho, salt-crusted potatoes with cilantro-garlic sauce, and a spread of fancy cheeses. This year she added watermelon agua fresca to the meal. (North chopped ten cups of watermelon for it.)  We called it Beth’s Feast and before we ate, Noah said, “Not a word about the food.” (This is a line from Babette’s Feast.)

While I did the dishes, Beth and Noah watched The Mandalorian, then we all played Cards Against Humanity and then Beth and North went for a walk while Noah and I watched The Magicians.

“We did all the things,” I said to Beth as we went to bed, but despite our busy evening, I couldn’t sleep that night, so I slipped down to the beach after Beth had fallen asleep, to stand on the sand and watch the heat lightning.

Wednesday

I woke up stiff and sore from pushing the beach wheelchair uphill the day before, but a morning swim, followed by sitting in a beach chair in the sun watching the waves, helped loosen me up. After lunch, we all headed to the boardwalk for treats. Noah and I shared a paper cup of fries, and North and Beth got gelati (a parfait of soft serve and Italian ice). I wanted funnel cake but I didn’t think it would be wise to eat it right after fries, so I decided to wait.

Noah went home while the rest of us went to the beach. With two adults, we could let North go a little deeper into the water as we each held one of their hands to stabilize them as they sat in the water. Some of the waves were big enough they could duck their head under them. Before we left, I had a brief swim. It was another sunny day with calm water in blue, green, and brown sections.

After we returned the beach wheelchair, Beth and North headed home and I got my funnel cake, which I ate very slowly in the shade of the porch of the restroom pavilion next to Funland. I only ate half of it—those things are enormous.

Next I came home and made dinner (a cucumber salad with yogurt-dill dressing and hard-boiled egg grated over it). It was ready early so Noah and I read before dinner and then after dinner Beth and the kids played a game they found in the house, while I blogged.

Thursday

Beth and Noah were out the door by eight the next morning. He wanted to fly the drone on another part of the beach, over some of the more iconic boardwalk businesses before many people were there. He flew over the Dolles sign and some dolphins, (but from pretty far away because he didn’t want to disturb them). Here’s about five minutes of his footage from both drone expeditions.

North got up twenty minutes after they left, just as I was about to wake them for their 9 a.m. Foundations of Tech class. (They decided later that day they wanted to drop half of the class and do the equivalent of a semester instead of a year over the course of five weeks because they were finding it more difficult than expected and they would have a lot going on with doctors’ appointments once we got back home.)

I made them breakfast, then headed to the beach, where I spent an hour and forty-five minutes at the beach, swimming and watching the waves from the sand.

I returned to the house, showered, read with Noah, and then we all walked down to the boardwalk again to have lunch at the crepe stall in an alley off Rehoboth Ave. It was while we were eating lunch that I finally agreed to North’s plan to go deeper in the water inside an inflatable ring with a mother on each side. (I was surprised they got Beth on board before me, as she’s generally more cautious about this kind of thing.)

Beth went to a 5 & 10 to purchase the ring, while I secured the beach wheelchair and then we all met up. It was tricky getting into and out of the water, but in between North had an experience more like swimming and they didn’t drown, so we considered it a success.

We couldn’t stay in the water too long, though, because North and I had reservations at Funland, which is operating at 20% capacity, with distancing on the rides and masks required. As a result of the reduced crowds, there were no lines to speak of, and people were pretty good about distancing. Not all of the rides are accessible, but two of North’s favorites, the Sea Dragon and the Haunted Mansion, were so they rode them three times each. I accompanied them in the Mansion and having never done it three times in one day before, I can now tell you on the second ride you notice little details you missed the first time, but by the third time it’s pretty much given up all its secrets. North also rode the helicopters twice and the bumper cars once. They were a little frustrated by a few rides that would have been accessible if not for one step up.

“Today was fun,” they said as we proceeded down the boardwalk toward home, where penne with a tomato-mushroom sauce Beth and Noah had made awaited. We ate dinner listening to a presentation about the fall semester at Ithaca on a laptop. Then after I did the dishes, there were games, and work on the puzzle, and blogging. But sadly, Beth was up late working, for the second night in a row.

Friday

I woke already sad to be leaving in a day. Sometimes at the end of beach week I feel peaceful and satisfied, but sometimes I’m just really sad and I already knew what kind of departure this was going to be.  Rain was predicted in the morning, so we spent it inside. Noah and I read and watched the season four finale of The Magicians while rain pelted the windows. It was over by lunchtime, so we all went to the beach and North got to try out the ring again. We never really mastered getting in and out of the water. It’s a terrifying process actually when the waves are deep enough to go over your child’s head, but not deep enough for them to float in the ring, though North seemed pretty unfazed by it. And then Beth got knocked down by a wave on the way out and skinned both her shins. But in between, we spent a nice hour in the water and it made North very happy.

The sky was all kinds of sky at once, part overcast, part sunny, with dark gray storm clouds out at sea. These had black strands hanging down Beth thought might be rain. When we got out, Beth and the kids went to the boardwalk for treats, but in a last-day calculus, I decided I’d rather have more beach time than ice cream so I stayed.  A big pod of dolphins showed up and started fishing in front of me, splashing, and flipping their tails out of the water. (I saw the back third of one of them all the way to the tip of its tail.) They were there for a half hour. It was kind of magical. I also saw osprey soaring over me with fish in their talons. I’d been seeing that all week, the fishing seemed better than usual for them.

When my family returned, just missing the dolphins, we walked toward home, but as we got close I realized I wasn’t done yet, and I split off again to return to the beach just in front of our block, where I rested on my towel and then sat up and watched the ocean, and then had my last swim in the golden early evening light. The water was calm, as it had been all week, so I floated on my back and looked at the cottony clouds and a gull circling over my head.

Back at the house, we had pizza delivered and ate it on the screened porch, and talked about how we’d missed being with our usual beach crew of extended family. Then I cleaned the kitchen, Beth and Noah finished the puzzle, we all watched an episode of Speechless, and started to pack up the house. We knew from our experience trying to get on the road a week earlier, it takes longer now that North can’t help as much and there’s more equipment to fit in and on top of the car.

Saturday

As a result of doing a lot of leaving-the-house chores the night before we got out of the house pretty smoothly and close to on time. Beth drove to the realty to return the keys while the kids and I went to the boardwalk to say goodbye to the ocean. This ritual had to be revised because it wasn’t worth the hassle of getting North down to the water, so instead we brought the water to North. We left the chair at the end of the plastic path where North could see us and we stood with our feet in the water for the requisite twenty waves, then filled a plastic water bottle with ocean water, came back and poured it on North’s feet.

And with that, our strange week at the beach was over.